With Wings Like Eagles (33 page)

F
or their help and advice in researching the story of the Battle of Britain I am indebted to Len Deighton, whose own book
Fighter
remains the benchmark for anybody writing about these events; to Tim Staples of Diverse Images, whose detailed knowledge of British and German aircraft of the period and enthusiasm were invaluable; to Sir Martin Gilbert, the fount of all wisdom on the subject of Winston Churchill, for his painstaking reading of the manuscript; to my neighbor Alex Kollmar, a pilot who generously refreshed my memory of the many things I have forgotten about airplanes since I left the Royal Air Force in 1953; and to Geoff Simpson, editor of
1940
, the magazine of the Friends of the Few. I am also very grateful indeed to my friends Winston S. Churchill and Sir Alistair Horne, CBE, for their careful reading of the manuscript, and for their numerous corrections and suggestions. Any remaining errors are, of course, my own.

I would like to express my very special gratitude to Dawn Lafferty, my assistant, for her help in preparing the manuscript; to the invaluable Mike Hill for his dedicated research skills; to Kevin Kwan for photo research; and to Barry Singer, of Chartwell Books, for his uncanny ability to lay his hands on books that have been out of print for decades.

I would never have written this book without the encouragement of my dear agent Lynn Nesbit and my good friend and fellow history lover Morton Janklow, or without the patience and sound editorial judgment of my editor Hugh Van Dusen, and the help of his assistant Rob Crawford, as well as the advice of the incomparable Gypsy Da Silva, whose ambition it turned out to be to go up in a Spitfire one of these days. (This is not an impossible dream—there are at least two Spitfires converted to two-seater trainers for the Irish Air Force still flying, one of them in California.)

Above all, I thank my wife, Margaret, for her patience in putting up with yet another long task of reading and research on my part, and for collecting yet another huge pile of books that fills a room in our house and strains the floorboards.

Addison, Paul, and Jeremy A. Crang (eds.).
The Burning Blue
. London: Pimlico, 2000.

Battle of Britain Campaign Diary
. Royal Air Force, 1940.

Bickers, Richard Townsend.
The Battle of Britain
. London: Salamander, 1990.

Brickhill, Paul.
Reach for the Sky: The Story of Douglas Bader, Legless Ace of the Battle of Britain
. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2001.

“Cato.” See Owen, Frank.

Churchill, Winston S.
Into Battle: Speeches
. London: Cassell, 1941.

———.
Never Give In!: The Best of Winston Churchill’s Speeches
. New York: Hyperion, 2003.

———.
The Second World War,
Vol. II,
Their Finest Hour.
London: Cassell, 1949.

Clayton, Tim, and Phil Craig.
Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain
. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999.

Collier, Basil.
Leader of the Few
. London: Jarrolds, 1957.

Collier, Richard.
Eagle Day: The Battle of Britain, August
6–
September
15, 1940, 2nd ed. New York: Dutton, 1980.

Deighton, Len.
Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain.
London: Cape, 1977.

Faber, Harold (ed.).
Luftwaffe: A History
. New York: Times Books, 1977.

Fisher, David E.
A Summer Bright and Terrible: Winston Churchill, Lord Dowding, Radar, and the Impossible Triumph of the Battle of Britain.
Berkeley, Calif.: Shoemaker and Hoard, 2005.

Flint, Peter.
Dowding and Headquarters Fighter Command
. London: Air-life, 1986.

Fozard, John W. (ed.).
Sydney Camm and the Hurricane: Perspectives on the Master Fighter Designer and His Finest Achievement
. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991.

Freiden, Seymour, and William Richardson (eds.).
The Fatal Decisions
. New York: Berkley, 1968.

Fuchser, Larry William.
Neville Chamberlain and Appeasement: A Study in the Politics of History
. New York: Norton, 1982.

Galland, Adolf.
The First and the Last
. Bristol: Cerberus, 2001.

Gallico, Paul.
The Hurricane Story: How a Great Plane Saved a War.
New York: Doubleday, 1960.

Gilbert, Martin.
Finest Hour
. London: Heinemann, 1983.

———.
Never Surrender. The Churchill Papers
, Volume II. New York: Norton, 1995.

Green, William.
Augsburg Eagle: The Story of the Messerschmitt 109.
New York: Doubleday, 1971.

Grinsell, Robert.
Messerschmitt Bf 109.
New York: Crown, 1980.

Hillary, Richard.
The Last Enemy
. London: Macmillan and Co., 1942.

Hough, Richard, and Denis Richards.
The Battle of Britain
. New York: Norton, 1989.

Ismay, H. L.
The Memoirs of General Lord Ismay.
New York: Viking, 1960.

Jenkins, Roy.
Churchill: A Biography
. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.

Jones, R. V.
Most Secret War: British Scientific Intelligence, 1939–1945.
London: Coronet, 1978.

Kaplan, Philip, and Richard Collier.
The Few: Summer 1940—The Battle of Britain.
London: Seven Dials, 1989.

Kens, Karlheinz, and Heinz J. Nowarra.
Die deutschen Flugzeuge 1933–1945.
Munich: Lehmanns Verlag, 1964.

Kurowski, Franz.
Luftwaffe Aces.
Canada: Fedorowicz, 1996; Mechanics-burg, Pa.: Stackpole, 2002.

Mason, Herbert Molloy, Jr.
The Rise of the Luftwaffe
. New York: Dial, 1973.

Morgan, Eric B., and Edward Shacklady.
Spitfire: The History
. Stamford, Conn.: Key, 1987.

Mosley, Leonard.
The Reich Marshal: A Biography of Hermann Goering
. New York: Doubleday, 1974.

Nesbit, Roy Conyers.
The Battle of Britain
. Stroud, U.K.: Sutton, 2000.

Nicolson, Harold.
Diaries and Letters, 1930–1939,
Nigel Nicolson, ed. New York: Atheneum, 1966.

Overy, Richard.
The Battle of Britain: The Myth and the Reality
. New York: Norton, 2000.

Owen, Frank (“Cato”).
Guilty Men
. London: Penguin, 1998.

Parkinson, Roger.
Summer of 1940: The Battle of Britain
. New York: David McKay, 1977.

Price, Alfred.
The Battle of Britain: The Hardest Day
. London: MacDonald and Jane’s, 1979.

———.
The Spitfire Story
. London: Arm and Armour, 1982.

Richards, Denis.
Royal Air Force 1939–1945,
Vol. I,
The Fight at Odds
. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1953.

Rigg, Bryan Mark.
Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military.
Lawrence: Univ. of Kansas Press, 2002.

Robertson, Bruce.
Spitfire—The Story of a Famous Fighter.
Letchworth, U.K.: Harleyford, 1960.

Robinson, Derek.
Invasion 1940: The Truth about the Battle of Britain and What Stopped Hitler
. New York: Carroll and Graf, 2005.

Sarkar, Dilip.
Group Captain Sir Douglas Bader: An Inspiration in Photographs
. Worcester, U.K.: Ramrod, 2001.

Terraine, John.
The Right of the Line
. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1985.

Townsend, Peter.
Duel of Eagles.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970.

Wellum, Geoffrey.
First Light.
London: Penguin/Viking, 2002.

Wood, Derek, and Derek Dempster.
The Narrow Margin: The Battle of Britain and the Rise of Air Power 1930–1949.
Barnsley, U.K.: Pen and Sword, 2003.

Young, G. M.
Stanley Baldwin
. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1952.